This invention relates generally to modular wall assemblies, and more specifically, to a modular wall assembly compatible with clean room requirements.
Buildings and rooms within buildings built with modular wall stud assemblies are typically prefabricated and ready for assembly at a building site. Such buildings include in-plant offices, guard houses, food service buildings, control rooms, toll booths, parking lot booths, noise control buildings, clean rooms, and the like. These portable buildings and rooms should be of quality construction, strong and durable. The materials utilized to construct such buildings and rooms should be energy efficient, have good sound control and low maintenance. Other characteristics of such buildings and rooms are relatively easy assembly at the job site and easy disassembly for moving to a different location. Such characteristics are particularly important as in certain applications space requirements, for example, the number and sizes of rooms, are constantly changing. Such modular wall materials should also be economical.
A number of modular wall assemblies are well-known in the art. In these wall assemblies, steel or aluminum wall studs are configured with side recesses for receiving the side edges of pre-fabricated wall panels to form walls. However, these known wall assemblies have been found to be difficult to apply in a clean room configuration. These modular wall assemblies, when constructed, sometimes include gaps, crevices and other surfaces that may be incompatible with a clean room application, particularly a pharmaceutical clean room application. Some inserts have been developed which are inserted into the wall studs in order to smooth out areas where wall panels engage the sides of the studs. However, such inserts add expense, additional parts, and a layer of complexity to the wall assemblies.